rapture posesses you
by dalai
Summary: He wonders, for a moment, what they’ll be doing ten years from now, when he returns.


**Welcome to my second psych fic! please enjoy and review with any feelings or comments you might have! i'll take anything, seriously, i'm that desperate. (kidding...maybe...) oh, the title comes from the particularly apt quote: **

**"A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie." ~Charles Edward Montague**

If any of them had been speaking to him, he would have tried to explain. Because, really, it's not like he saw this coming (and, _hello_, irony.)It was just another slipshod idea, a spur of the moment lie meant to do nothing more than get him from this spot of trouble to the next, like hundreds of others he's told before and since. It wasn't supposed to become his _life_, can't they see that? He just wanted away from the station.

It didn't really make a difference, he supposed. And while he wasn't a pillar of maturity or anything, his inner Cameron Frye accepted that this was on him. Just him. (he was pretty sure they knew he was lying when he insisted that Gus and Henry didn't know, but they didn't press the issue. They could have his head for this, it would be enough.)

The thing was, he usually anticipated things better than this. Not the getting caught thing, he'd known that was coming, eventually. Jules and Lassie were too smart to accept it forever (he'd actually thought they'd known all along. Honestly, he'd thought they'd struck a sort of unspoken bargain. He'd solve their cases and, in exchange, they'd pretend he wasn't a huge fraud. Apparently, not so much. ) There were other things, though, that had blindsided him in a way he'd never experienced before. It was like being involved in the world's _slowest_ car accident. Like something life-changing and unstoppable that was approaching so slowly, so imperceptibly that he didn't see it until it hit. Because he was in _way_ too deep before these things came to his attention.

He hadn't expected to love it as much as he did. It was what he was meant to do, he was sure, and if his life's purpose necessitated lying to those closest to him, well, he chose not to dwell on what that might mean.

He certainly hadn't expected his latest harebrained scheme to be the thing that began mending a fifteen year rift with his father. He hadn't expected Henry to be _proud_. Nor had he known how loathe he would be to give that up.

And how could he have anticipated Jules? How could he have known she'd show up and tangle his heart up with hers? He probably should have ditched, he knew, at the first inkling of what she could come to mean to him (he'd done it before, on the dock all those years ago, and he supposed it had worked out), but really, he was as much adventurer as Uncle Jack, and this was a new kind of adventure entirely. Things had gotten infinitely more complicated, but he dealt with it as it came. He always had.

He remembers the surprise that flitted across their faces, mixing with the anger and betrayal, when he didn't fight or argue. He could, he knew. Could tell them that he'd _helped_. That he'd saved lives, their lives, and others. That he'd done the job when they couldn't (legalities not withstanding). He'd been good at this. It had been good.

Which is exactly why he hadn't said those things. It had been good, and it wouldn't be again, regardless of what he said. He'd made a choice in that interrogation room four years ago. Before Jules, before Lassie had become a begrudging partner, before his father had been able to look him in the eye, before Gus was back in his life with a regularity missing since high school. One instant and he'd given up things he hadn't even begun to have. Important things. Things he'd never get back.

It had been fun, and more. He had laughed and loved and gotten shot at and gotten shot and all those other cliché, end of series montage moments. He'd had the life he hadn't known he wanted and he'd had it for longer than he expected he could (it still wasn't long enough, but there was a saying about begging and choosing, he was almost sure.) And now, sitting among the boxed up remnants of _Psych_, which had become his home in ways nowhere else had ever been, he searched for some kind of acceptance. The feelings he knew he should be having as this story's disgraced and abandoned hero. He should be glad to have loved and lost this life, should have that post-adventure fulfillment.

He didn't. He wasn't fulfilled, wasn't satisfied. He hadn't had enough, could never get enough. He would have kept at it forever given half a choice. Too bad the choice had been taken from him, or, rather, he'd given it up (along with so many, many things.)

That's life, though. He'd walked away from everything before. He'd survived then, and he'd survive now. That much, at least, he did know. Being resilient had it's advantages, and the people he chose to irritate into liking him wherever he ended up next would not see the piece of himself he was leaving in Santa Barbara. It wasn't like there were no other grumpy Irishmen or pretty young blondes with big hearts and iron spines in the world. And while he'd never love the replacements the way he did the originals, that was alright. He could pretend (and convincingly, it would seem).

Besides, he'd always wanted to try his hand at fortune cookie writing. That was next. And while his particular brand of wisdom may not be widely appreciated _(he that fakes psychic power…_), it is hard won.

He wonders, for a moment, what they'll be doing ten years from now, when he returns. He hopes they'll have stopped hating him by then, he's grown oddly attached to having a place that might be a home.

fin.

**There you have it. i don't know yet about a follow-up, it depends on response, among other things. so...maybe?**


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